Lok Sabha election 2024: Will Mumbai beat voter apathy & keep date with polls?

MUMBAI: In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections which followed the Pulwama attack, Mumbai's turnout was 55.4%, the highest in three decades. This was a departure from the electoral apathy typically seen in India's financial capital. Polling in the city had sunk to an all-time low of 41.2% in the 1991 polls which followed the Mandir-Mandal agitation and has crossed the half-way mark only three times since.

How will Mumbai score on Monday, with the poll being held in the peak of summer and in the last leg of this drawn out 5-phase election in Maharashtra? In 2019, Mumbai had voted on April 29. This year, voting day is almost a month later, coinciding with school vacation.

Amid concerns about the nationwide turnout so far, Maharashtra has recorded 62.9% overall in the four phases of the poll, a marginal increase of 0.4% from 2019. And Mumbai is ground zero of the turmoil that followed the BJP-backed split of Shiv Sena and NCP. It is the birthplace of Shiv Sena and now the backdrop of the prestige battle between its two factions for control over the city.

The campaign has been dominated by emotive issues including the 'traitor-loyalist' narrative that followed the Sena split and the Marathi-Gujarati divide which flared up in Ghatkopar. PM Modi made the "nakli Sena" jibe at Uddhav Thackeray's party.

Slum redevelopment, price rise, transport and infrastructure were among other issues that were raised during poll campaigns. Mumbai often serves as a barometer for the mood of the nation. Since 1991, the party that controlled Mumbai has gone on to form the govt at the Centre.

In 2004 and 2009, the Congress-NCP alliance dominated Mumbai by winning all six seats and the UPA ruled at the Centre. BJP and undivided Sena won all six seats in 2014 and 2019 even as PM Modi took charge in Delhi.


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